Last year we noted, via the Liberty Blitzkrieg blog, that rents in San Francisco and surrounding areas had grown so out of control that even Ivy Leaguers, like 31 year old Luke Iseman of The Wharton School, were having a hard time making ends meet. After growing tired of renting a run down, tiny apartment for $4,200 per month, Iseman decided to take a novel approach to housing. So he rented out a warehouse space and filled it with 11 steel shipping containers that he now rents out as makeshift apartments for $1,000 per month. We learn more from Bloomberg:...

Dubai-based Gulftainer and Its Terrorist Ties Posted on June 12, 2015 by TMH 0 By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton Gulftainer, a Middle East-based company, is opening its first American cargo terminal today at Port Canaveral. The new terminal is expected to have a $630 million impact on the local economy. (VIDEO STILL/Gulftainer) Gulftainer Co. Ltd., an Emirati container terminal operator, opened its first US terminal today in Port Canaveral, Florida. A number of staunch conservatives showed up to protest the opening and with good cause.The terminal, which has leased land at Port Canaveral for 35 years, marks the first significant containerized cargo...

Well, here’s some lovely news emerging from the new Iraq. 17.09 Chemical weapons produced at the Al Muthanna facility, which Isis today seized, are believed to have included mustard gas, Sarin, Tabun, and VX. Here is the CIA’s file on the complex. QuoteStockpiles of chemical munitions are still stored there. The most dangerous ones have been declared to the UN and are sealed in bunkers. Although declared, the bunkers contents have yet to be confirmed. These areas of the compound pose a hazard to civilians and potential blackmarketers. Numerous bunkers, including eleven cruciform shaped bunkers were exploited. Some of the...

The world's largest capacity container ship has set off on its maiden voyage. Measuring 400 m (1,312 ft) in length and 58.6 m (192 ft) wide – or the size of four soccer fields for those more familiar with that alternative unit of measurement – the CSCL Globe can carry 19,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) shipping containers.

This is a shipping container. It’s used to transport large amounts of goods on boats and on trains. By itself, it’s pretty boring. But with a little imagination, the shipping container becomes a cheap, reliable building block that can be used to build chic little getaway homes and castles of majesty alike!

I was watching TV this evening and started to flip cable channels when I saw a streaming on MSNBC on our forces finding castor beans. The following is a part of what their website said about it. NBC News’ Jim Miklaszewski that within just the past week, U.S. investigators had found two shipping containers filled with millions of much more recent documents relating to chemical and biological weapons. One of the documents, from 2001, was titled “Document burial and U.N. activities in Iraq,” the sources said. It gave detailed instructions on how to hide materials and deceive U.N. weapons inspectors,...

The Obama administration has failed to meet a legal deadline for scanning all shipping containers for radioactive material before they reach the United States, a requirement aimed at strengthening maritime security and preventing terrorists from smuggling a nuclear device into any of the nation’s 300 sea and river ports. The Department of Homeland Security was given until this month to ensure that 100 percent of inbound shipping containers are screened at foreign ports. But the department’s secretary, Janet Napolitano, informed Congress in May that she was extending a two-year blanket exemption to foreign ports because the screening is proving too...

U.S. exporters will see ongoing equipment shortages in the months ahead, and the container shortages could become even worse if imports from Asia do not pick up significantly during the peak shipping season. The equipment imbalance is occurring at an especially bad time for shippers of agricultural products because exports are starting to pick up after a lackluster first quarter. If exporters can not secure more empty containers for their products, the export boom will be snuffed out before it gathers steam. Agricultural exporters in the U.S. interior are at greatest risk. "Eastbound cargo isn't delivered where westbound cargo is...

Paper no. 3068 Admiral Sureesh Mehta, the Chief of the Naval Staff sounded a stern warning on 18th February 2009, about the possibility of nuclear weapons being smuggled in to the country through the ever increasing container traffic. The warning was issued at a seminar to discuss Port Development and related security issues. At one level, there is nothing new in the warning. Similar warnings were issued post 9/11 by US and other maritime analysts who expected the seas to be the next medium for transportation and manifestation of terror. It is this fear that prompted the US to examine...

The television advertisement starts with an ominous warning about 9/11. Then it shows a nuclear explosion, followed by a photo of Osama bin Laden and a ship loaded with cargo containers. "Since 9/11, it is one of the greatest threats we face, a nuclear weapon in the hands of Osama bin Laden shipped through an American port," says the voice-over. Finally, the ad reveals its villain: an outfit based in Arkansas that has a network of 1.8 million workers around the world who operate at 3,900 locations in the United States. Its corporate name is Wal-Mart Stores Inc. What's the...

PURPOSE The purpose of this hearing is to investigate the security of containers used to ship goods imported into and exported out of the United States by water. The Subcommittee will receive testimony from the Administration, cargo shippers, vessel operators, as well as freight terminal owners and operators. BACKGROUND Overview The United States’ maritime borders include 95,000 miles of open shoreline, 361 ports and an Exclusive Economic Zone that spans 3.5 million square miles. The United States relies on ocean transportation for 95 percent of cargo tonnage that moves in and out of the country. Each year more than 7,500...

Every so often nature surprises us by offering a simple solution to a seemingly impossible problem. Now it seems that the great scourge of the 21st century, rogue nuclear weapons, also may yield to a natural remedy--sunlight. Homeland security experts worry less about a repeat of the events of September 11 than they do the detonation of a crude nuclear weapon in a major city. Their nightmare scenario derives from two facts. The first is that the world is awash in dangerous nuclear materials. A small amount exists in the form of enriched uranium and plutonium--needed to make atomic bombs....

WASHINGTON -- The Customs Service refused to let 13 sea containers destined for the United States be loaded onto ships at foreign ports because of insufficient details about their contents, a violation of a new federal rule. The agency says it needs timely and accurate manifest information to effectively evaluate and identify cargo that may pose a risk to U.S. security. With 5.7 million cargo containers entering U.S. seaports each year, Customs says it is critically important to prevent terrorists from using sea containers to smuggle nuclear, chemical, biological or other deadly weapons into this country.

A top Al Qaeda operative plotted to smuggle weapons into New York Harbor in the shipping containers of a Garment District firm, the Daily News has learned. Days before he was captured in Pakistan in March, suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed met in Karachi with the owner of a W. 35th St. clothing importing company and his son, law enforcement sources said. Al Qaeda's No. 3 man offered to invest $200,000 in International Management Group in exchange, federal authorities now believe, for access to IMG's Port Newark-bound shipping containers, sources say. Mohammed "is obsessed with attacking the United States,...

More details have emerged about an apparent infiltration of Islamic terrorists through US ports during the past two months.Some of the men slipped through secuirty disguised as stevedores, according to Bob Graham Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.He said he had seen reports indicating that some extremists might have been wearing safety jackets and protective helmets to give the appearance of dockworkers.U.S. Coast Guard Officials have refused to divulge any information about the reports but Graham stressed: 'The American people have a right to know.'He said 25 extremists 'entered in a foriegn country, hid out in a container...

(CBS) Sept. 11 or not, U.S. Customs can still inspect just 2 percent of the 6 million cargo containers entering the U.S. annually, making seaports and the final destinations of the containers all across America vulnerable to terror. Steve Kroft’s report, in which the U.S. Customs commissioner and other officials admit the danger, will be broadcast on 60 Minutes Sunday, March 24, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. “The system is vulnerable,” says Robert Bonner, commissioner of Customs. “I mean the movement and the potential for concealing a terrorist weapon inside a cargo container,” he tells Kroft But Bonner is confident that...